Alfred Jones and the Overprotective Prefect
by noki4
Summary: AU fusion with Harry Potter. "This was the year Alfred Jones - the Boy Who Didn't Die - came to Hogwarts."
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **A Harry Potter fusion, based on a prompt from **cyanclouds** for her Secret Santa fic on the USUK LJ comm.

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><p>Arthur was fourteen years old the year Alfred came to Hogwarts - fourteen and a prefect, the youngest prefect in Hogwarts for two hundred years. He was a fifth-year though - starting his education a year early on account of being an orphan - an orphan who was heir to House Kirkland and all its wealth, its manors, and its honor - an orphan whose relatives fought over the privilege of taking him in, until they discovered that an iron-clad will and thin-lipped, keen-eyed barristers meant that the wealth and the manors and the honor would go to none but Arthur. Then they no longer desired to house him and feed him, and called him a selfish boy. And he would be shuffled off to the next family, who would try to be friends, and then they would find out about the will, and the whole cycle was repeated again. At first Arthur would cry when his 'new family' turned cold and distant, but then he understood them, and he stopped.<p>

He had lived in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland - in London, on the Yorkshire moors, and in Cornwall - up and down the United Kingdom like a gypsy. When he was ten years old, hiding in the woods from his bigger cousins, he decided that enough was enough, and that he would go to Hogwarts now, instead of the year after. His parents' barristers helped him. And he enjoyed the look on his cousins' faces when he announced that he had been accepted into Hogwarts - "special circumstances".

So he went, and he threw himself into the schoolwork. The years with his relatives had made him solitary, and he could not break the habit of it - but the other students left him alone and they respected him for his intelligence and his toughness, which was more than all his cousins ever did; and the teachers liked him. He got top marks in every subject, never caused trouble, and would not suffer trouble to be caused in his vicinity. Therefore they made him a prefect of Gryffindor.

He absently rubbed the already-gleaming badge pinned upon his robes as he watched the year's Sorting. He knew - all knew - that this was the year Alfred F. Jones - the Boy Who Didn't Die - savior of the wizarding world - was to come to Hogwarts. It would be the first time in ten years anyone in Britain had laid eyes on him, because it had been reported (shortly after, the reporter who had written that story came under investigation and faded away into obscurity) that the baby, newly-orphaned, newly triumphant over evil, had been shipped away to some foreign land, to protect him from vengeful servants of the one he had slain. But of course he had to come back to attend Hogwarts.

Arthur wondered what he looked like, but then was distracted when his eyes were caught by a boy in the line. He was tiny - smaller than anyone else in his year, much smaller than an eleven-year-old should be. His round-cheeked face was like a cherub's, and his big blue eyes - shimmering with tears - like sapphires. He looked afraid and lonely, standing apart when all the other, larger children were grouped up, chattering to each other excitedly or looking around with great interest. Arthur's heart went out at once to the little boy, seeing shades of another small scared child in him. The new prefect tried to give an encouraging smile when their eyes met, and was pleased when the boy visibly relaxed, and even sent a tiny, tremulous smile in return. Beside him, his seatmate had dropped his spoon in shock at the sight of Arthur Kirkland - Arthur "Iceheart" Kirkland - smiling such a tender, soft smile.

And then the deputy headmaster boomed out: "Jones, Alfred!" and the little cherub started as violently as a hound-pup hit by a thrown slipper; jaws all around the Great Hall dropped. This trembling little thing was the slayer of the Dark Lord, the hero of the wizarding world? Most of them had their bets on a tall, dark-haired lad who walked with glowing self-assurance; or on a scrappy little brown-haired fighter already wrestling with a bigger boy in the line. None of them (except Arthur) had spared two glances for the tiny child trying to hide in the shadows of his yearmates.

But it was the little blond who crept to the Sorting Hat, none of the watching professors turning him away and indeed watching his progress with an interest that terrified Alfred and confirmed his identity to the rest of the school. Alfred's eyes were wide and tear-bright as he climbed up the stool (being just a bit too small to simply seat himself on it as did most other first-years) and the last thing he saw, before the brim of the magical Sorting Hat slipped over his eyes, was the nice boy with the green eyes, and the red-and-gold lion on his prefect's badge.

Then he heard whispering winds flowing through his head, words like the undercurrents of a river just below the surface; and it flickered through his memories like a man flipping through the pages of a picture-book. Alfred squirmed and bit his lip uncomfortably.

"_Ho! You can feel that, can you? Haven't had such a mind in here since that Kirkland boy...and before him, nothing for centuries. It's going to be a very interesting time in the old castle, _I_ think. Now, where should I put you, my rare-minded little lad?_"

Less a full-formed thought and more a strong feeling, Alfred answered with: {_nice boy_} - a strange tangled twist of {_green eyes_} and {_red-gold lion_} and {_smile_} and {_smile-at-**me**_} mostly, but the Hat - being _the_Hat - knew what Alfred meant.

"_You're a little young for that, aren't you?_"

"_...for what...?_"

"_Never mind. Are you sure, you could be great you know, Slytherin will help fetch it out...no? Well, then, if you're sure, better be_GRYFFINDOR!" The Hat yelled that last aloud, the word ringing in the hushed Hall. And then one-and-all the Gryffindors rose up in their seats, and cheered like they had been at the Quidditch World Cup, and England had just triumphed.

"We got Jones! We got Jones!" sang out a pair of red-haired twins, while Arthur took Alfred by the arm - gently - as the boy came stumbling towards his new House, and made him sit next to the prefect, and he loaded Alfred's plate up with food.

"Here, eat," he said earnestly. "God knows you need to."

Alfred blushed and ducked his head, but his eyes were shining and he smiled.

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><p><strong>tbc<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: **A Harry Potter fusion, based on a prompt from **cyanclouds** for her Secret Santa fic on the USUK LJ comm.

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><p>So that was how Alfred F. Jones came to be a member of Gryffindor House, and from the first day he was Arthur's faithful shadow, dogging his steps with wide and worshipful eyes. Arthur was, in turn, his affectionate and protective guardian, shepherding Alfred around, warding off too-curious schoolmates with a glare, and actually hexing one who had demanded to see the famous eagle-shaped scar on the Boy Who Didn't Die's forehead. They sat together at meal-times, Arthur tutored Alfred, and if Alfred had a nightmare he was known to crawl into Arthur's bed, shivering, until Arthur's whispered lullabies soothed him to sleep.<p>

Alfred did very well at Hogwarts, with his "Artie" beside him. Arthur loved it, too, having his adorable little Alfred - he never thought of him as "the Boy Who Didn't Die" - always beside him, always there to laugh at his jokes and listen to his stories and follow his lead. Arthur had been alone for so long - now that he wasn't, it was a heady feeling.

Rumors swirled around the school about Alfred's past. Some said he'd never left the United Kingdom at all, but was merely said to have done - hidden in some ancestral castle, or in the Ministry, or in Hogwarts itself. Some said he'd been smuggled across the Channel, to France, or to Belgium, or to Spain - and one even suggested Germany. Most believed he'd been smuggled across to the Colonies (the wizards, slower to change than their Muggle brethren, still called it that - to the few American wizards' annoyance) but exactly where was still a hotly-debated question. Had it been in New York - and in a luxurious town-house on Fifth Avenue, or in a ramshackle flat in Hell's Kitchen? Boston, Salem, Philadelphia? Perhaps - but this was seen as unlikely, as the vast majority of America's small population of wizardkind live on the East Coast - San Francisco or Los Angeles?

Only Arthur knew the truth - only he knew about Alfred's wandering lifestyle all over the States, mostly in small, sparsely-populated areas - an isolated homestead in New Mexico, a ranch in Texas, a farmhouse in Kansas, a little apartment in North Dakota - the longest stay in a cabin in Alaska, where his caretaker hunted, fished and trained sled-dogs, and went into the nearest town (two hours' ride on snowmobile) only once every month for supplies.

Arthur, remembering his own roaming, housed-but-homeless childhood, would cuddle Alfred close after every small-voiced, hesitant mention of Alfred's past. And he would share his past in return - telling Alfred things he had never told anyone before, his dead parents and empty house, his loneliness, and his family-that-was-not-family. And Alfred would look up with great big eyes that _understood_, and Arthur thanked God every night for bringing his new little brother into his life. 

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><p>Alfred eagerly followed Arthur's lead in all things, liking what he liked, admiring what he admired, taking his every word as gospel and his every action as scripture. It made Arthur beam with pride when he saw Alfred repeating something he said - such as when he overheard Alfred saying that of course scones were better when thoroughly seared, an attitude he had copied wholesale from his older hero. People had grudgingly admired Arthur but no one had ever wanted to be <em>like<em> him before.

But even he admitted that there were a few undesirable side-effects to Alfred's unquestioning and complete hero-worship, the most undesirable of which was Alfred's gaining of his very own archrival.

This was one thing Arthur wished most whole-heartedly he had not passed onto his younger brother (he hardly thought of it with qualifiers anymore) because he thoroughly despised his own archrival. They had been enemies since before they had even come to Hogwarts, an enmity that was legendary even in the long, contentious history of Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Francis Bonnefoy, son of the French Ambassador to the British Ministry of Magic, was everything Arthur was not, a mirror image exactly in reverse. He was charming where Arthur was abrupt and stand-offish - elaborately coiffed and maintained where Arthur's only nod to appearance was to keep his uniform scrupulously neat - the easygoing, smiling Slytherin prefect to provide a better-liked alternative to Arthur the scowling Gryffindor one - a Quidditch legend who passed some classes effortlessly while not caring a fig for those he did not - popular among his peers and much sighed-over by girls _and_ boys in every House, and delighted to grace the beds of most of them. And last of all, he was a much-beloved son, doted upon by his parents and most of his family - a stark contrast to Arthur the unloved, Arthur the iceheart, Arthur the orphan - a fact Francis liked to toss in the other boy's face as often as possible, in as many sly, subtle little insults as he could manage.

They had loathed each other for as long as Arthur could remember, from their first meeting - when Arthur's parents had still been alive and had brought their only son to a Ministry ball, where one-year-older Francis had used wandless magic to try and 'repair those unsightly things on Arthur's face' and ended up burning Arthur's brows right off - and with each passing day their enmity grew and grew.

And Francis had a cousin in the same year as Alfred.

Young Matthew Malfoy, related to Arthur's bane through both his mother _and_ father, had actually once been rather sweet, Arthur recalled dimly - utterly forgettable, but nice and polite. He had met Matthew at another Ministry function, this time after his parents had died and his current group of grasping relatives had used Arthur's prestige to wrangle an invitation, and the little boy had greeted him politely, and then never did anything again during the dinner that Arthur could remember - which was, in Arthur's opinion, a vast improvement over his cousin. This of course changed, and by the time he entered Hogwarts as a first-year he was a smaller, quieter copy of Francis, whom he worshipped as Alfred worshipped Arthur.

Arthur blamed Matthew's corruption on Francis, on whom he blamed most things, ranging from the overly elaborate menu that did not include good plain British cooking as often as Arthur would like, to Gryffindor's loss of the House Cup for five years straight (a loss, Arthur was convinced, that had been accomplished through means most foul), to bad weather conditions in the UK and the breakdown of morality worldwide.

And so he blamed Francis, ultimately, when Alfred and Matthew ended up having a fist-fight in the middle of a hallway.

Now, Francis was too canny to make an enemy of the Boy Who Did Not Die. In fact he had instructed Matthew to try and cultivate the young hero's friendship. But he was such a horrible person that of course Arthur had complained about him several times to Alfred, cementing in that young heart a fervent and undying hatred of anyone his beloved Artie hated so much, and of course he was around Matthew so much, corrupting him further, that of course Alfred associated the other first-year with that evil prefect who had called Artie an unloved orphan - an insult that made Alfred blink back empathic tears - and so of course Alfred had spurned Matthew's rather condescending offer of alliance, and it was really all Francis's fault after all.

So Alfred - surprising everyone who remembered the trembling, teary-eyed child from the Sorting, and who had only seen a studious, dedicated little boy in classes after - and Matthew fought at every occasion after that, in squabbles that made everyone recall with painful vividness the legendary feud between Arthur and Francis, which bid fair to be echoed in exacting fashion by these two new first-years.

Once, Arthur had gently tried to suggest to Alfred that just because he, Arthur, hated Francis with many good reasons, it did not follow that Alfred needed to follow in his footsteps. Alfred had only looked at him with wide eyes and announced indignantly that Matthew had insulted Arthur as "not fitting company" for Alfred, and so he would hate the Malfoys and Bonnefoys and any other type of Foys forever and ever and ever. Arthur had grabbed Alfred and hugged him tightly for being angry on Arthur's behalf - because no one had ever been before - which was very nice but not exactly conducive to convincing Alfred not to regard Matthew as evil. 

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><p>Most students (and most teachers, as well, although <em>they<em> could not admit it) were actually glad that the Malfoy-Jones (or Bonnefoy-Kirkland, part deux) feud had erupted, for the simple reason that it made them feel better. In the first place, it was entertaining. Secondly, and more importantly, it proved that Alfred could, when pushed to it, stand up for himself. The idea that the wizarding world had been saved by an utterly helpless milksop was not appealing; the flashes of temper and fighting spirit were much more in keeping with their idea of a hero.

The latest incident seemed to cement their new-old view of Alfred as The Hero, rather than as That Boy We Thought Was A Hero. It involved Malfoy, Alfred standing up to him, and impressive broomwork, all elements that combined to make a very satisfying story to tell in the Great Hall.

The Gryffindor and Slytherin first-years had been having their first flying lessons, and somehow Matthew managed to snatch Alfred's new silver cross necklace - a present from Arthur, charmed with multiple layers of protective and tracking spells - and fly away with it while the instructor was busy with the other students. Furious, Alfred had chased after him, and it had devolved into an aerial duel which ended with Alfred snatching the silver cross from midair.

And then the Head of Gryffindor, watching, had decided that the best way to handle the situation was to offer Alfred a place on the Gryffindor Quidditch Team.

When Arthur heard the news, he fainted.

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><p><strong>tbc<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: **A Harry Potter fusion, based on a prompt from **cyanclouds** for her Secret Santa fic on the USUK LJ comm.

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><p>In the instant that a happy yearmate, bubbling over with the latest gossip regarding the Boy Who Didn't Die, told Arthur that Alfred had been selected for the Quidditch team - the youngest Seeker appointed in over five hundred years - a thousand deaths-by-Quidditch flashed behind Arthur's eyes. Bludger to the head - a fall hundreds of feet down - smashing into the unforgiving ground - a Quaffle, ill-thrown, knocking a little, light-boned boy off his broom - Beaters wielding their bats with malevolent glee - a Snitch to the eye - rival Seekers bashing their brooms into his - and yet more horrible fates. Overwhelmed, he slipped into darkness.<p>

When he awoke, with a weeping and fearful Alfred beside him and a ring of interested classmates watching - one having just upended a conjured bucket of ice-cold water over Arthur's head - he did not even stop to give his classmates consideration. He merely rushed for his rooms, Alfred tucked under his arm like a puppy, adrenaline from bad dreams giving him the strength of ten men and the purpose of a hundred.

The next morning, he had prepared - with Alfred watching his labors the whole time, in the library, while Arthur explained to the little boy exactly his arguments - a presentation for the staff, based heavily upon that vision of death and destruction that had come upon him, supplemented lavishly with researched figures, illustrations, and charts. He applied to his Head of House, who had dropped a hundred notches in Arthur's estimation by suggesting the whole horrible idea, but by the end, drawn by the lurid lights and gruesome sound effects, the whole staff was watching.

He began by explaining that the ban of having first-years in the Quidditch teams was there for a hundred and one good reasons and then he proceeded to elaborate on these good reasons. His first argument was about the statistical likelihood of death and injury - and then about the psychological effects, on the team, on the House, on other Houses, and on the young player himself, that were sure to ensue - he had only gotten into Part III: The Delicate Nature of First-year Skeletal Structures and How Easily Bones Are Broken At That Age (Subtitle: The Breaks That Stay For A Lifetime) when the Gryffindor head, looking a bit green, put up his hands and surrendered - a complete and utter surrender, backwards and forwards, and even apologized.

The staff applauded.

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><p>In order to soothe Alfred's mild disappointment (although, since he believed utterly that Arthur had forbidden Quidditch in order to save him from death, the only evidence of disappointment was a slight sadness in his eyes), Arthur decided to give the boy private flying lessons. Arthur's dorm-mate Mathias Kohler, the disappointed Captain of Gryffindor, offered to take the boy under his wing - but Arthur, regarding him with the same suspicion a mother offers a scorpion found in her baby's crib, rejected it on behalf of Alfred, and immediately went to the library to read up on every book they had on broomsticks.<p>

He ordered a Nimbus Two-Thousand, said it was his to get around the first-year ban on owning brooms but told Alfred it was really all for the boy's very own. Alfred then burst into tears - alarming Arthur - and he hugged the prefect, managing to gulp out that it was the first present he'd ever received and he loved it, thank you! Arthur hugged him back.

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><p>Though Arthur tried to keep their private flying lessons private, interested classmates had seen him and Alfred - had seen Alfred take to flying like a duck to water or - more to the point - like a young eagle to the sky. They reported with hushed voices that the Boy Who Didn't Die was also the Boy Who Could Really Fly - and Seeker-lacking Mathias glowered at Arthur whenever they met.<p>

Alfred found flying sheerest ecstasy, which was enough for Arthur to get over his mild dislike of the practice (he much preferred being on land - or sea) and even if he lacked Alfred's natural broom-talent, he had a quick mind and access to books to coach Alfred into a solid grasp of the basic principles. Alfred decided that this was much better than being on a Quidditch team, where he'd have to deal with big scary Viking-looking captains and even more crowds.

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><p>Matthew, resentful that Alfred had come out of the whole affair with even more positive attention, challenged Alfred to a duel.<p>

Alfred promptly told Arthur, who gleefully used the opportunity to entrap Malfoy (mildly disappointed that there was no way to implicate Bonnefoy as well) and take away a large number of points from Slytherin.

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><p>Alfred's entire first year at Hogwarts went similarly smoothly - buffered from harsh and traumatic events by Arthur's ever-watchful presence. There was a three-headed dog Alfred never discovered, because he would never go out of bounds - the bounds Arthur enforced; there was a philosopher's stone that Alfred never knew was being hidden in the Castle; and there was a jinxed broomstick Alfred never rode, because he wasn't on the Quidditch team.<p>

There was a Dark Lord-possessed teacher Alfred never interacted with, because being around him gave him a headache and in the end he found it easier to skip all Defense Against the Dark Arts classes and be personally tutored by Arthur instead.

There was an enchanted mirror Alfred never found, and an Invisibility Cloak he received anonymously one Christmas and never used - because he immediately showed it to Arthur, who ran a battery of tests on it, and then - still suspicious - told Alfred he'd have it kept safely in the Kirkland family vault and to ask for it if he wanted it. Alfred only nodded and smiled, too busy playing with the set of enchanted wooden soldiers Arthur had gotten him for Christmas to care about the strange silvery cloak.

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><p>The end of the year came with a strange anonymous note that informed Alfred that <em>"the treasure of Hogwarts is in great danger"<em> and _"Only you can save the school from the Dark Lord"_ and "_Your parents would be proud." _A helpful map and description of the Philosopher's Stone was provided.

Alfred immediately showed it to Arthur, of course, who took swift and decisive action.

He contacted his barristers via owl, who - after checking with Gringott's and Nicolas Flamel through Floo - had a detachment of Aurors sent to the school. They immediately stormed the third-floor passageway, drawn by the magical signature of - all things! - a Cerberus-hound, and found a hidden hallway fiendishly yet stupidly trapped.

"It was all deadly, and bloody careless to keep in a castle full of children," as one Auror later described it, "But nothing a determined first-year couldn't handle - thereby combining the faults of being both useless _and _lethal into one ill-thought-out venture."

The Stone was taken away for safekeeping, the Headmaster fined, an investigation launched, and no one noticed the shy meek DADA professor disappearing from the Castle. Later they thought he had simply fled from the excitement, his frazzled nerves too overwhelmed to take any further strangeness.

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><p>Alfred cried at the end of the school-year - not because of his grades (which were excellent, thanks to Arthur's tutoring) - but because he had to go back to the States, and Arthur back to his relatives.<p>

Arthur, feeling wretched himself, comforted the still tiny boy, promised to write every day, to visit when he could, and told Alfred to "keep your chin up, and study hard."

They wouldn't meet again until the start of the next school-year, but _that _is another story.

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><p><strong>fin <strong>


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